How Augmented Reality Impacts the Insurance Industry: 7 Use Cases of AR Applications

SashaButenkoBDM

Augmented reality (AR) obviously cannot transform the whole insurance industry. However, AR technology has the potential to change the way insurance services are promoted significantly.

Furthermore, various companies have started using a real-world view with computer-generated information in some advanced ways.

How exactly can insurers benefit from augmented reality and use it as an effective sales-driving tool?

With the popularity of smart mobile devices, augmented reality becomes a part of marketing strategies for numerous commercial organizations.

Digi-Capital forecasts that the augmented reality technology will generate $83 billion in global revenue by 2021.

By exploring and adopting this AR technology, companies strive to get a competitive advantage over other market players. Though, there are industries that hesitate to implement AR solutions for their corporate needs.

Insurance is among those industries that are slow to adopt augmented reality. These companies are still exploring the capabilities of AR, but they are already making the first steps towards determining their key priorities and goals within this technology.

Insurtech enterprises cooperate with augmented reality developers to build brand new solutions that would allow them to increase the proficiency of their business.

Augmented reality in insurance: use cases

Over the last few years, AR strengthened its presence in the insurance sector.

Providing interactive user experience as well as ensuring both customer entertainment and engagement aren’t the only AR use cases for insurers.

They can use augmented reality to warn their clients about dangers, estimate damage, explain insurance plans. They also use AR for marketing and brand promotion purposes.

Furthermore, this augmented reality technology can significantly improve the way how insurers provide their services.

Let’s consider how certain insurance companies use AR for their business needs.

1. Warning about certain dangers

Allianz, a worldwide known insurance company based in the UK, has used the capabilities of augmented reality to increase customer awareness about many dangers that they may face in their homes.

The insurer has built their own house, which customers can visit and detect possible home incidents using their mobile device.

When they enter the house with a built-in smartphone camera enabled, they can see various hidden dangers on a display of their devices, such as a smoking and sparkling toaster, breaking the bathroom floor caused by sink floods, cracking aquarium, etc.

2. Increasing brand awareness

A Belgium-based insurer called AXA Insurance used an AR-enabled game called Ingress to expand its brand awareness. Video game Ingress is a multiplayer online game for Android and iOS devices with the multimillion audience.

Moving with their mobile devices in the real world, players must capture portals in the virtual world of the game. These portals are usually situated near different sights in the real world.

Capturing portals brings various game items: a key to another portal, resonators, weapons, portal modifications, capsules and story videos that can help players win other portals. These things include branded items that are more powerful compared to basic gaming ones. One of them is AXA Shield.

According to the official game trailer provided by AXA, the insurer has greatly benefited from this partnership:

AXA Shield player coverage: 5 million item deployments

More than 600,000 players visited AXA offices in real life

AXA generated more than 3 million in-game actions

More than 55,000 players interacted with AXA employees

3. Explaining insurance plans

Desjardins Insurance is a Canada-based company that offers various retirement plans to customers. They decided to turn an annoying and boring process of choosing a convenient retirement benefit plan into a fun and exciting activity with the help of augmented reality.

The insurer has a branded paper card called “Penny Dollar”. When users scan it using the AR app, a virtual 3D model appears on the screen of the smartphone and provides them with useful information in an interactive way.

4. Improving advertising campaigns

Augmented reality offers interactive experience and extensive marketing opportunities that provide users with significant entertainment value. Insurers can use 3D models to promote their services by encouraging users to share their augmented reality experience with others.

A UK-based insurer called Liverpool Victoria (LV=) partnered with Blippar on improving their advertising campaign.

Since the insurer uses augmented reality to make newspaper flyers “alive”, the company proves that the insurance industry can be both innovative and interesting in its approach to advertising.

When users scan flyers provided by LV= with a smartphone camera via the Blippar mobile app, on the display they see the appearing 3D house model. By moving their mobile device, users can explore the house, and learn what they can insure: a car, pet, and so on.

Furthermore, they can order insurance services by providing necessary information and making a phone call without leaving the app.

5. Damage estimation

Augmented reality can help adjusters remotely determine the damaged area of various objects and provide 360° assessment by using photos of the damage and building 3D models from them.

The video above represents how adjusters can solve this problem with video technology, but augmented reality can make the solution even more efficient.

With the use of AR, technical specialists can understand the damage volume by overlaying object images representing the object condition before and after the accident.

Taking into account collected and processed information, adjusters can measure dimensions of damaged parts and calculate the required repair costs.

One of the potential use cases for the augmented reality technology lies in inspection apps. With digital building plans and installation of sensors on a damaged building, insurance inspectors can accurately review all damaged parts of the building.

Using AR-enabled solutions, inspectors can literally look behind the building walls and determine the location of a gas line or fire epicenter.

Symbility Video Connect is a live video communication solution that allows customers to send their claims to insurers in real-time.

With this tool, policyholders can communicate with insurance adjusters to fully and remotely inspect the damaged property.

Symbility Video Connect allows customers to use the built-in camera on the policyholder’s mobile device to collect all the necessary information regarding case consequences.

This solution helps adjusters collect both documents and data needed to estimate the damage and define the services required in real time. It allows insurers to maintain customer claims in a much faster way and across a wide geographic location.

They can pause or live video, highlight any point of their interest, and save necessary images and facts to the customer’s claim.

The primary value of this solution for insurance experts is the capability to precisely estimate the damage without physically being situated within the cause area. They can take and zoom pictures remotely while being sure that the claim details are accurate and not overestimated by a policyholder with the intent to get a more significant compensation.

6. Remote guidance and training

Both precision and safety play a significant role in liquidating accident consequences such as property damage.

AR-enabled solutions can overlay damaged areas and object parts with the helpful information and necessary instructions to remotely help specialists perform repair operations.

Using augmented reality, technical experts can remotely guide assessors located in the area of the damaged property regarding accurate repair operations.

By maintaining assessor’s mobile device, experts can mark necessary areas on a device built-in screen and add some useful tips, or review checklists using gesture controls.

This increases work effectiveness, reduces expenses, and optimizes the use of an expert’s time.

Augmented reality can also be used for training purposes.

In 2015, a Germany-based company called Zurich Insurance created an augmented reality app for both remote guidance and employee training.

The insurer applies AR apps during classroom-based training sessions when employees can point their mobile devices at special posters that enable videos with an online training course or book which provides additional in-depth information.

In total, more than 10,000 employees in 170 countries participate in this AR training program.

According to Daniel Neubauer, a group head of learning innovation at Zurich Insurance, their internal studies show that about 30-40% of employees suppose that they haven’t got the right training to do their work perfectly well.

Neubauer believes that the use of augmented reality will help them improve the quality of corporate training programs and payback the investments very quickly.

7. Creating new service niches

Walking the streets can be very dangerous if you do not have your eyes fixed on the road, something complicated when playing Pokémon GO.

Therefore, a Mexican insurance company called Jiro y Asociados Seguros launched a unique policy for fans who enjoy the application.

Seguro GO is an insurance policy that protects people playing Pokémon GO from various accidents, such as injuries or even death.

The Seguro GO policy costs 399 pesos ($21.28), and it implies a full coverage of accidents occurred while playing Pokémon GO.

However, a full coverage is not applicable in case if an accident occurs when a policyholder drives a car while playing the game.

The maximum Seguro GO sum assured equal 20,000, but people should instead be attentive and careful on the road to avoid dangerous situations while playing any mobile games.

The future of AR in the insurance industry

Insurance companies can use augmented reality in various ways to bring innovation and drive value with the capability to make decisions in real-time, provide interactive, useful, and entertaining content in a new way, and increase customer engagement.

The insurance sector tends to hesitate to deploy AR in its business processes, but augmented reality technology can provide it with many opportunities that will enable companies to be more competitive and attract more customers.

Tracking and navigation systems can augment real-time data to help people better understand the surrounding conditions, such as potential dangers on the road, other vehicles’ speed, signboards, weather, or traffic.

It will ensure a safer driving and, as a result, will help insurers save their funds on claim compensations.

When it comes to communication with customers, insurance agencies often behave distant and aloof while being tied with their traditional methods and channels of interaction with their target audience.

However, the emerging augmented reality technology already changes an insurer by insurer including such leading companies as Allianz and AXA.

Small and medium (S&M) insurance companies should turn towards the exploration and deployment of new technologies such as augmented reality to compete with those players who have been leading the market since the 1950s.

SMB market participants face many difficulties in this competition since they rarely can offer lower prices for insurance plans or more significant amounts of payments.

Therefore, they should discover new ways of how to attract a new generation of young adults or even existing clients of leading insurers.

Augmented reality is among those new age technologies that can provide insurers with a winning advantage in the form of a modern interaction with customers.

It’s hard for insurers to offer something new to customers when it comes to the quality of services.

However, with augmented reality, insurance companies can establish a new engaging communication method that will bring value to customers and encourage them to choose a more interactive company.

The insurance industry will take advantage of those opportunities driven by augmented reality in the close future since other sectors; gaming and retail, in particular, took a step further in their exploration of AR technology.

However, when augmented reality becomes mainstream, those insurers will take the lead that will have the deployment process started by that time.

Perhaps, soon we will see new amazing and more effective AR use cases in insurance.

For example, using drones that can measure dimensions of damaged property areas and augment this real-time data to help adjusters perform remote damage assessments.

One way or another, augmented reality is worth investing in.

Content delivery, damage assessment, or employee training – whatever application you choose, it will definitely highlight your insurance company in this highly competitive market and help you gain word of mouth.

To lead the way, it’s essential to be remarkable.

If you need a professional consultation on augmented reality development – contact us, we are always ready to help!